


see light where others cannot

by escherzo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Post-S6 AU, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:05:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escherzo/pseuds/escherzo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chasing the spirits of the dead, in one way or another, has always been the Winchester lot in life. These days, it's more so than it's ever been. [Or: In which Sam and Dean find themselves with a new sort of job, courtesy of Death]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Goes AU post s6, although mainly it's AU after 6x20 as that's when the lion's share of this was written. I will freely admit to having broken a few rules here and there lore-wise where convenient. Title is from a Dead Like Me quote, and yes, having said that, a large chunk of you probably already know where this is going. I never claimed it was subtle. Mostly this is just me going I JUST WANT THEM TO BE HAPPY OK

This is the first time:  
  
The diner is an old brick affair, weathered at the edges but lit up bright and cheery by the mid-morning sun streaming in through the dusty windows. Fans whirl overhead but heat creeps in every time the door opens, the jingling bell overhead an advance warning for the breeze to follow. Sam sighs and shifts in his seat, the vinyl creaking under him. Dean's existence is devoted entirely to consuming coffee and huevos rancheros for the moment, fork clinking on the plate and adding to the low thrum of noise in the room, and so it's only Sam who sees it when it happens.  
  
There's someone in his peripheral vision. He turns his head fast, made unsure by the way the man seems to waver. He rubs his eyes, takes a sip of coffee, but the man remains stubbornly present, walking back to one of the tables as though there's nothing wrong. As though there isn't something that makes Sam's hair stand on end, just looking at him. It's a deeply-held instinct, one Sam can't shake. The man looks normal enough; he's older, maybe seventy, unremarkable with his thick glasses and polo shirt and confused, knitted eyebrows. He looks around as if unsure of where he is, and Sam is about to speak, about to as him if he's lost, when he notices two things.  
  
One: the back of the man's head is covered in blood. Two: while Sam was watching, a waitress walked straight through him.  
  
There's no drop in temperature, no ozone smell, nothing but instinct and experience that makes Sam see the man for what he is. He tenses, hand going to the gun tucked in his jeans automatically, but the man's head jerks up with an abrupt movement and he moves toward something—or someone—Sam can't see, hand outstretched. He's half out of sight, just a glimmer in the corner of Sam's eye when light envelops him and he vanishes into nothingness.   
  
No one else is looking towards where the man was. No one else seems to have noticed that anything happened. Even Dean is still eating his eggs, oblivious, although he hasn't looked up from his plate in quite a while.   
  
The door to the men's room opens then, and Sam's thoughts flee his head as he hears a high-pitched scream.  _Like a girl, Dean's going to say like a girl,_  Sam thinks, looking over. A figure in the doorway, stock-still, and on the ground in front of him, collapsed on the grimy tile, an old man. Thick glasses, polo shirt, blood pooling out from his head. Sam exchanges a look with Dean. Accident, probably. Accident, nothing for them to do, nothing except leave before the police arrive.  
  
Sam doesn't tell Dean about seeing the man before his body was found.  
  
  
  
A week later, and Sam is still mulling it over in his head. The man wasn't a vengeful spirit, that much is clear, at least based on the fact that he'd probably died no more than half an hour before Sam saw him, if that. He didn't attempt to hurt anyone, didn't move anything, didn't give any of the usual signs of a manifestation. No one else even noticed that he existed. As far as Sam can tell, he wasn't a vengeful spirit, a death omen, or an echo. He was a garden-variety recently-dead person and nothing more.  
  
And yet, Sam saw him. He has an explanation for that, but it makes even less sense than the rest of what happened in that diner.   
  
Apparently, he's dead.   
  
Again. Only this time, he somehow missed the memo.   
  
Dean must be too, because if he died and Dean didn't, Dean wouldn't be functional. Dean wouldn't be as he is at present, drumming on the steering wheel and singing along to a Ramones tape, somewhere in the gray area between in-tune and awful and sliding from one to the other with a cheerful disregard for Sam's ears. It's forced perkiness, and the upbeat music has been a standard for the past five months, as though Sam's sanity gives a damn about the soundtrack to his life. Still, it's normal.   
  
Despite being theoretically dead, Dean seems to be doing an admirable job of interacting with people and driving a car without going through it, so Sam's theory has some holes. He spends a few days testing it out, in the name of science. It doesn't help.   
  
Upending the salt shaker onto his palm didn't do anything. The five minutes he spent idly twirling an iron rod around just made Dean look vaguely concerned, as though Sam was about to go postal on him with it. His hand doesn't go through walls. He doesn't seem to be able to walk through anything, which is actually a shame, because a day into the experiments he walked headfirst into a door.   
  
Conclusion: he's not dead. He's just apparently seeing dead people, and it's a shame Dean doesn't seem to be too, because there are a wealth of  _Sixth Sense_  references to be made.   
  
“Sam?” Dean asks, and Sam startles back into awareness. Dean's fiddling with the volume with one hand and stealing glances at Sam out of the corner of his eye, like if he doesn't actually turn his head Sam won't notice he's doing it. He's been doing that since the wall fell. Sam knows what it looks like; when he gets lost in thought, even if it's unrelated, it looks like those early days, the dangerous days, where he could forget where he was or  _who_  he was as easily as breathing. He shakes his head to clear it and looks up.  
  
“Fine, Dean,” Sam says, smiling fondly at his brother just to watch the worry-lines soften. “Just thinking.”   
  
“Gonna share with the class?”  
  
Sam thinks about it. “Nah,” he says. “Not yet.”   
  
Dean shrugs and cranks the music, and Sam lets his mind blur away, miles of flat scrub and blown-open blue sky dulling his senses as he rests his head against the window. He smiles to himself, only half-listening to Dean's singing starting up again. Maybe he shouldn't question it. He's alive and so is Dean. He hasn't needed anything more than that in a long time.  
  
  
  
Three days later, Dean comes back to the motel room spooked. He doesn't say a word for a moment, but he shoves his hands in his pockets so Sam doesn't see them shaking. His eyes are wide and his gaze darts around the room, trying to find something to settle on. Dull beige walls, unremarkable frayed bedspreads, one with a hole burnt into it, the same lamps and TV that've been in their rooms for the past thousand miles. There's nothing in the room to look at except Sam. For some reason, Dean seems to think Sam won't notice he's freaking out just so long as he doesn't actually make eye contact.   
  
“Dean,” Sam says, trying to be as patient as possible, “you're freaking out. Look at me, man.”   
  
“I'm fine,” Dean says, settling down onto the opposite bed and clasping his hands together. It gives a groan of protest and Sam could swear a puff of dust rises up into the already-stale air at the movement. Dean makes a face at that, and there, there's Sam's opportunity.  
  
“We've got to start staying in better places,” he says, scooting over so he can bump his knee against Dean's companionably. “Did you find anything?”  
  
Dean's silent for a long moment. “Saw something,” he admits, finally looking over at Sam. His eyes are bright and wide, almost painfully green in the lamplight, and, not for the first time, something low flutters in Sam's belly just looking at him.   
  
“A ghost?” Sam asks.  
  
Dean snorts. “Yeah, I'm not used to seeing ghosts. They're all new and freaky. I haven't been seeing 'em since I was like ten or anything.”   
  
“Don't be a dick. That's not what I—nevermind.”   
  
“C'mon, Sammy. Spill.”   
  
“Was about a week and a half ago,” Sam says, laying back so he can stretch out on the bed while he talks. It's easier, not having to look at Dean, but his arms go off the sides of the bed and his feet stick out at the bottom. He sighs. “That diner, back in Tulsa? With the dead guy in the bathroom?” He shifts, trying to find a comfortable spot on a mattress that doesn't have any.   
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I saw him,” Sam says finally. He closes his eyes, the weight of the admission heavy on him. “Walking around. After—you know. After he was dead.”  
  
“Oh,” Dean says quietly, and the two of them lapse into silence. In the distance, cars rush by on the road, kicking up water from an earlier rainstorm. The lights of the motel buzz and crackle, and the bathroom light flickers off-on, off-on twice before Dean speaks again. “I saw something like that too,” he says. He reaches out and prods Sam in the side, and Sam yelps.   
  
“Dude, what the hell.”   
  
“Just making sure we're not ghosts,” Dean says, smirking, eyes alight with challenge, but his smile fades when Sam sits up and gives him a serious look.   
  
“I already checked,” he says, a hand over his side where Dean just touched him. “You thought I was being clumsy.”   
  
“Oh, so you walked into the door  _on purpose._ ”   
  
“... Yeah.” Sam hadn't, but Dean doesn't need to know that.   
  
“Uh huh.”   
  
Sam flips him off and Dean grins.  
  
By unspoken agreement, they leave it alone for a while.  
  
  
  
Lake Michigan stretches out before them, vast and endless slate-blue water, sky as colorless and unremarkable as the beach under their feet, as though all the color for miles around has been sucked away. The beach is empty and a cool, bitter wind whips up, rippling the water. Sam walks forward, sand between his toes, cold and clumping with moisture. Dean jogs forward to catch up to him, spraying sand and pebbles. It's too cold to go to the beach.   
  
There's an outcropping of rock at the water's edge, big enough for the both of them, and Sam gets there first. He crawls up and dangles his feet over the edge, just close enough to be able to feel the water spraying him when the breeze hits it just right. He shivers, looking over to Dean as Dean settles down next to him.   
  
“Whose bright idea was it to go to the beach in October, anyway?” Dean asks, looking out at the water. It's like it could stretch forever, like the two of them could walk out onto it and keep going until the end of time. Far away from the road and alone on the beach, their voices are the only sounds that rise above the whistling wind and the birds that wheel overhead.   
  
The world is too big, here. Sam's glad for the comfort of Dean next to him, the heat of Dean's body as it presses against his. All this empty, open space would terrify him if he was alone.   
  
But then, that's true of most of the world, these days. Sam hasn't seen a demon in four months. Half their cases, at least, are garden-variety salt-and-burns and nothing else; most of the time, that's all there is to find. The night is safer than it used to be. The dark is emptier. The shadows have faded away, dissolving into light. Maybe that's what Sam gets in exchange for having a broken mind; if there's a bigger plan behind the world now he can't see it. They haven't seen Castiel since the night Purgatory was opened. They still don't know how they got away. Someone, or something, sent them back to where the Impala was, and they stumbled away as best as they could from there.   
  
In the early days, Sam didn't notice the changes. He was busy trying to keep himself together, and taking new cases wasn't on his or Dean's mind. Sometimes he would collapse for hours, or days, at a time, or he would find himself in an alleyway in a new city, covered in grime, being shaken awake by Dean, with no memory whatsoever of getting himself there. Even now, he has days where he can't get out of bed, and Dean has forbidden him from driving at any point in the near future. He'll probably never drive the Impala again. It's not safe; he's not safe.  
  
The safer, emptier world—it should be a blessing, a respite from everything the world has thrown at them lately. Instead, it's strangely terrifying. The world Sam knew from before is gone, and it's only Dean at his side that keeps him sane and level in the face of that.   
  
And then, there's this new thing. Sam still doesn't know what to make of it; he and Dean haven't talked about what they've both seen, although it's happened another time since. In a movie theater in central Iowa, Sam and Dean both saw a man get up from his seat—and leave his body behind him. Dean managed to spill his popcorn and Sam got an elbow to the ribs and the two of them were too busy trying to make sure the other saw it that they missed the man's spirit disappearing, leaving only the shell behind.   
  
It's not like Sam's abilities, which are dormant for now. It's something more natural than that, more basic. It goes down to bone and blood, and he shares it with Dean. Dean, the only constant in his life, his one anchor-point to the world around him. It's because of that, and because of that only, that he can handle it.   
  
Dean tugs at a piece of rock until it slips free in his hand and then tosses it out into the water with a flick of his wrist. He was trying to skip it, Sam can tell, but it slips into the water with a light plop instead, and Dean scowls, feeling Sam's body shake with barely-contained laughter. The laughter comes easier than it has in a long time.  
  
“You know,” Sam says into the stillness, later, “we're not supposed to be seeing them.”   
  
“Course I know that, Sammy,” Dean says. He picks at a jagged edge of stone with a fingernail, flicks back-forth. It grates against Sam's nerves but he knows it's just reflex. Just a sign that Dean is uncomfortable. “Could always be a curse.” There's a hopeful note to his voice, and Sam cuts him off before he can say, 'we could call Bobby.' It's tempting; having an encyclopedia on speed dial means never having to bother sitting around and wondering, but Sam knows it's not a curse. Dean does too, probably. Curses spider out from the center, leaving a low-grade hum of  _wrong_  all over his body. He knows the feeling well enough by now. This isn't like that.   
  
“What would we even say?” Sam asks, struck by the way Dean stands out against the bleakness of their surroundings, a bright spot against all the gray. He's gotten into the habit of answering questions Dean forgot to ask. It saves time for everyone, even if it annoys the hell out of Dean. “Hey, Bobby, promise you won't laugh, is there a curse that makes you see dead people.”   
  
“Life.”  
  
“What?”   
  
“The curse that makes you see dead people,” Dean explains, kicking his legs back and forth. Sam is suddenly, vividly reminded of the two of them sitting by a riverbank at twelve and eight, trying to tempt the fish into nibbling on their toes because Dean thought he could reach in and grab one if it got interested enough in eating Sam's feet.   
  
“Well, that's cheerful,” Sam says. “You were supposed to be answering as Bobby.”  
  
“Less depressing, more whiskey-fueled?” Dean asks, affecting the best thoughtful expression he can manage. “More like, 'I'll look into it, call me if you two chuckleheads manage to pick up anything worse in the meantime.'”   
  
Sam shrugs. “Closer. Your accent's off though.”   
  
“You got a better one?”  
  
“No,” Sam admits. “And that's why I don't do impressions.”   
  
They call Bobby the next day anyway, just to check in. Dean doesn't mention the curse and Sam doesn't call him on it; it's enough to get across that neither of them is a drooling wreck and they're not horribly maimed in some way. The fact that that's the standard for 'doing fine' is a little sad, but that's life for you, Sam figures. At least, that's  _this_  life.   
  
  
  
There's a ghost tucked away in the far corner of an old house in Missouri, a place long-abandoned and peeling, a warped black shape towering up towards the sky with trees curling in on all sides. No deaths, but enough rumors to spark curiosity. Enough to lure in thrill-seeking teenagers who come out the other side battered and bruised, and that's enough of a reason for Sam and Dean to make their way inside. The place has been empty for years, probably since the thirties if Sam were to take a guess. Boarded-up windows with spray-painted graffiti, old couches with mice burrowed into the stuffing, cracked and peeling paint and floorboards that bend and creak with every step. Exactly the type of place that looks like it should be haunted, which generally means it isn't. Sam's about to give up on the place when Dean taps him on the shoulder and gestures with a jerk of his head to the wavering form of a little boy down the hall from them.  
  
He and Dean approach as carefully as they can, but the boy doesn't attack. Sam doesn't lower his gun, but he says, “Hey,” soft and gentle. It's worth a try. Sometimes, with the younger ones, just talking works better than shooting. Simpler emotions are stronger, linger more easily; no one is quite so stubborn as a small child can be.   
  
“Hi,” the boy says, staring down at his feet instead of looking at Sam. “Are you here to break stuff too?”   
  
Sam and Dean exchange a glance. “No,” Sam says, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans.   
  
As it turns out, the boy wants someone to talk to, more than anything. Sam sits him down and tries to be as gentle as possible, hunching away his height and using what Dean calls his 'spooked horse voice.' Dean just watches, leaning against the wall, and he rubs his ring finger absently, as though he doesn't even realize he's doing it. Sam knows what he's doing; he made Dean tell him about the day he wore Death's ring not long after Dean did the deed. He's been better about spirits, since. Whatever he saw that day—he didn't give many details—changed him in some inarguable way. And maybe he's not contributing now, but he's there, and he's willing to step in when Sam's had enough. Sam doesn't need to ask him to know that.   
  
And then, it's done. The boy fades into light beside Sam and Sam just watches him go, afraid to break the moment. It's deathly still in the house, after, no sounds except the slow whistle of the trees back and forth in the wind outside and their breathing.   
  
“Guess I'll put the kerosene back in the trunk,” Dean says, never afraid to ruin the silence for Sam. He grins and claps Sam on the shoulder affectionately, and Sam's body goes warm all over from the contact. He bats Dean's hand away, but he's smiling, all the same.   
  
  
  
There's something between them, these days, deep and basic like blood. Sam can see it, and if Dean can't, he's blind. They're closer than they used to be, closer than when Sam threw himself into Hell for Dean—or the world, but what's the difference, in the end?--or in the early days of having his soul back, where everything was new and raw and Dean couldn't stop watching him. Months of Dean holding him together when nothing else would brought Dean into sharper focus for Sam. They're already soulmates, by Heaven's definition, and now they share this new ability, too.   
  
Sam sees people die often enough; it's an occupational hazard. These days, he's getting used to seeing their spirits rise after they fall. They don't usually linger, but Sam can see when they do; he knows when they'll turn violent, like a sixth sense. There's anger in their eyes, hot and blazing, as though they're crying out, “What happened to me? I didn't deserve this. This isn't fair.” If they speak, he can't hear them. Not yet, at least. Maybe that will come in time.   
  
And so their lives change, a bit at a time. They can't burn the recently-dead easily, but Sam takes to noting down where the potential vengeful spirits will be. If something crops up in the area, they'll be ready, already knowing what happened before anyone else does. No one has to get hurt, not if they're quick. He spends long hours in the car, adding details to an already-growing book, and Dean fills in the blanks for him when he stalls. They go back and forth like that through the night, building up profiles. John's journal is in the trunk, and as Sam makes notations he's reminded of it. This journal is shared between them as much as that one ever was.   
  
  
  
Life narrows down to the road ahead of them, stretching out into the future. Endless highways and the sameness of every motel room in America make Sam feel as though he's living the same day forever. He knows what that's like; this time, though, Dean stays alive. The world is so small now. Civilians blur in and out of their lives and they hardly take notice; Sam used to have more of a passing acquaintance with normal, with people who didn't spend their nights with a shovel in one hand and a match in the other. He used to be able to integrate into a world where having an arsenal in the trunk wasn't normal. The world is emptier of their kind, and so they continue on, just the two of them.   
  
Bobby calls sometimes, and others enter the life and don't leave; the night is safer and so people remain who would have died out, before. Sometimes they cross paths with others. There's still little in common; those new, younger hunters have never seen a fraction of what Sam and Dean have seen between them, and they never will. The connection between them and the rest of the hunting world is frayed at best, and sometimes it's easier to just move on to new cases and leave those strangers behind. Chasing the spirits of the dead, in one way or another, has always been the Winchester lot in life. These days, it's more so than it's ever been.   
  
  
  
They make their way across the flat expanse of Utah, miles of gray land and gray sky, cracked dirt spiderwebbing out like trees. Sam watches tiny towns blur into the distance in the side mirrors, wondering what sort of people they contain. They're on the second day of a cross-country drive and exhaustion pounds through his skull, turning Dean's music into a throbbing buzz in his mind. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the cool glass of the window.   
  
Dean takes the hint, and they stop for coffee at the next exit. The place is small and unremarkable, a soft-lit wooden cafe that's not much their style, but it's what they've got and it's better than nothing. Sam settles down at one of the tables, crossing his legs at the ankles and leaning back in his chair to stretch out his aching back, and it's only because he has one hand gripping the table that he doesn't completely upend himself when he sees it.   
  
“Dean,” he hisses, and Dean turns around. “Look.”   
  
He's almost afraid to look in that direction. Dean does without the slightest bit of hesitation, of course, because he doesn't know what's there.   
  
“... What the hell?” Dean asks, trying valiantly to not let his voice get above a whisper. It's not working.  
  
There's a reaper sitting in the corner, drinking a cup of coffee. Gray-white face, black suit, disturbingly cheerful expression all things considered, and unless Sam is hallucinating the reaper is also reading the paper. There's a grim reaper reading a newspaper and drinking coffee and Sam is actually awake and witnessing it.   
  
It chuckles, and Sam revises his list of Creepiest Things Ever, adding it solidly at number two, after clowns.   
  
“Bet he's looking at the obituaries,” Dean says.  
  
“Dude.”  
  
“What, you were thinking it too.”  
  
Rationally, Sam knows he shouldn't be surprised. If he can see spirits, by all rights he should be able to see reapers just as easily, seeing as they're both part of the spirit world. Irrationally, he wants to run away and not stop until he's gotten a couple states between him and it. Dean isn't as fazed, but Dean has actually  _been Death_ , so it's probably tame in comparison.   
  
“Can anyone else even see him?” Sam whispers, glancing over at Dean. “I mean, he's got a coffee—unless he can make his own he'd have to actually order it.”   
  
“They can appear however they want,” Dean points out. “Remember Tessa?”  
  
“And 'visible' is one of the options?”   
  
“Do I look like the expert here?”  
  
The reaper is staring at them. In fairness, they've been staring at it (him?) for a solid five minutes, but Sam is still not big on the idea of getting into a staring contest with a reaper. He swallows hard and stares at the tabletop instead.   
  
“Dean, we are leaving. Now.” Sam lets himself glance at the reaper again and it raises an eyebrow at him. It doesn't have the kind of face that works well with actual facial expressions, especially not ones like that.   
  
He doesn't get his coffee. He's pretty sure he does get scoffed at, on his way out.   
  
For the sake of his sanity, he's pretending to not notice.   
  
  
  
One month blurs into the next, the days slipping away like water. They spend their nights on the road, in motel rooms, sitting side-by-side against the solid, reassuring weight of the Impala watching the stars. Sam tries to name the constellations in order in his head and gets lost, and Dean watches the trails of planes through the night sky suspiciously, just in case one of them happens to start falling. He has a strange and irrational paranoia about planes landing on him, even after Sam explains the impossible odds of it happening. They watch awful game shows and reruns and Dean spends three days saying “holy rusted metal, Batman!” at every opportunity because he knows it drives Sam nuts. The car rumbles on strong and sure, and they knock cases down, one after another.   
  
Life is still and peaceful, more so than it's been in a long time, and Sam holds onto it with everything he has. He hasn't had to patch Dean up in a long time, praying he won't bleed out, hands shaking as he tries to thread a needle with his hands covered in blood. Dean hasn't had to hold vigil over Sam's unconscious body more than twice in the past few months; Sam still breaks, sometimes, but not often. He's starting to see what brings on the flashbacks, and so it's easier to avoid them. They're getting older and more experienced, but it's more than that. Sam's almost got himself convinced that he's not  _aging._  Dean found his first gray hair four months back, and hasn't seen one since. Of course, he's still in his thirties, so it's early for him, but the Apocalypse certainly didn't make either of them look younger. Maybe they just need to wait, and they'll change with the world, instead of it changing around them. Maybe. Sam's not so sure, anymore.  
  
The two of them snake from one end of the country to the other, speeding down winding mountain roads and dipping into valleys. The plains stretch out before them, vast and endless, and Dean drives like all Hell is chasing them, engine growling like it's a creature of flesh and blood. Only a few years before, all Hell was chasing them. Now, nothing is after them. Heaven is quiet; for better or worse, the war is over. Hell is keeping to itself just as much.   
  
There's no greater picture, no higher goal. It's just him and Dean and the people they can save. He's missed it more than he ever expected to.   
  
Dean cranks up the music with a wild grin and they speed off into the night.   
  
  
  
They're stopped at a gas station in Colorado, high up in the mountains where the sun scorches the ground and the breeze is no more gentle. Sam is slumped in the passenger seat, arm propped on the open window, and he can feel his skin burning. It's hot, unseasonably so, and he's sweating like a pig, sticking to the seats. He shifts uncomfortably and the seat beneath him squeaks in protest. Dean is taking longer than he expected. He's probably buying half the store, if Sam was to guess; they're two days into a new credit card and Dean got a good take last night. Sam can't begrudge him a little indulgence at this point. As long as he comes out with something cold for Sam to drink, Sam won't care if he's in there buying Ho-Hos or some equal monstrosity.   
  
Dean's suddenly visible out of the corner of his eye and he blinks, looking up. Only two bags on Dean's arm, and Dean has an expression on his face that Sam actually can't place.   
  
“Dean?” he asks, frowning, and Dean hands him the bags without another word before sliding into the driver's side.   
  
“Guess who I saw?” Dean asks, starting the car. He doesn't look over at Sam.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Tessa.”  
  
“... in the gas station.”  
  
“You going deaf on me, Sam? Yeah, in the gas station. Candy aisle. Maybe she was stopping for a snack.”   
  
“Or else she was checking up on you. I mean, come on, Dean, it's pretty weird that you just  _happened_  to run into her.”   
  
“Why would she be checking up on me?”  
  
“Maybe something to do with the sneak-peek into the spirit world we've been getting this year?”  
  
“... Dude,” Dean says, opening a Coke and taking a swig, “One, we've already seen it. Two, you've died  _four times_  and I've bit it so many times I've lost track. It's not really a sneak-peek anymore.”   
  
Sam has to concede the point.


	2. Chapter 2

It's always been him and Dean against the world. Partners in crime, soulmates, whatever name Sam chooses to put to it, the point is—the world is him and Dean, accept no substitutes. For a while, it was John too, but it hasn't been for many years, now. It's just the two of them, and Sam likes that.  
  
The months pass away, slipping through his fingers, and no one else comes in at the cracks. Maybe it should bother him. Maybe they are too close—maybe they should find someone else to be with once in a while, but they're getting to the point in their lives where it's too much effort to reach out. Some days, the only person Sam even sees is Dean. No one else would understand that sometimes Sam sees things he shouldn't, that sometimes Dean meets reapers in gas station candy aisles. Their lives have a thousand threads of complication, and they've worked out how to work with them. Anyone else would get tangled.   
  
One night, Dean pulls to the side of the road in a nothing part of Wyoming, too tired to keep driving but with no motel for probably another fifty miles in any given direction. Dean's been yawning, which makes Sam yawn, which makes Dean yawn worse, and it's a miracle that they haven't drifted off the road already. There are no towns for miles around, and the highway is an absolute pitch-black, stars so clear and crisp in the sky that once the dome light goes off in the car Sam finds his gaze fixed upwards, marveling at them.   
  
“I'm getting in the back,” Dean announces, and for the first time in a long time, he motions for Sam to follow. Sometimes, in the past, they would curl together in the backseat when Sam was having nightmares every night, or when one of them was injured and they needed to remind each other that they were still alive. Sometimes, Sam would be shaking, and Dean would whisper, “Ssh, it's alright, it's alright, I got you.” It wasn't something they talked about; in the mornings, they pretended nothing happened and kept their contact to a minimum, like by keeping their distance they could pretend they hadn't spent the night half on top of each other. The backseat isn't big. It's certainly not big enough for two grown men to be comfortable, but they've been finding ways to be comfortable in the Impala since they were children and they've adapted over the years.   
  
This is the first time that Dean's motioned for Sam to follow him when there isn't anything wrong. It feels like a new beginning, like the start of something, maybe. He's probably reading too much into it. Whatever Dean's reasons, the car is growing cold from the chilled air outside and Dean is warm and comfortable. He's not about to turn that down.   
  
He climbs over the seat, narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the ceiling, and he half-falls onto Dean. Dean swears, elbowing him in the ribs for good measure, and the two of them jostle in the confined space until they can find a position where they'll both be able to get some rest without killing each other in their sleep. Dean mutters something about cuddling and Sam grins at that; only Dean can offer to share the backseat of a medium-size car with someone and then get grumpy when they actually take up the amount of space a person would. Cuddling is inevitable. If Sam doesn't hold onto Dean, he'll fall off the seat entirely.   
  
When Sam blinks back into awareness five hours later, Dean's flush against him, hips pressed tight to his. Sam doesn't register the movement he feels for a solid thirty seconds, at which point he realizes that Dean is rubbing off on him. Dean's breathing hitches, but he looks dead to the world, still sound asleep, and Sam doesn't try to pull away. Doesn't try to second-guess the sudden twist in his gut, the way all of his breath leaves him in an instant. His eyes drop to Dean's lips and stick there, and he can't shake the thought of kissing him. It flashes through him like electricity, shameful heat rising in his cheeks. Dean might go with it, for a while at least, until he woke up fully and figured out what the hell was going on.   
  
Sam wouldn't, would never take advantage like that, but he's thinking about it anyway. What it would feel like, how good it could be.  
  
He's shaken out of his thoughts when Dean blinks back into awareness. Dean goes absolutely still against him and then he wrenches himself away, swearing as he falls right off the seat into the footwell below. His head connects with the side of the car with a solid thunk, because that's just how their lives work, and Sam grins down at him.   
  
“Morning, Dean,” he says, not even attempting to hide his amusement.   
  
Dean keeps up the blurry-eyed, muttered curses for the next hour or so, and a few times Sam hears something about 'fucking octopus limbs.' That one's entirely unfair though; Dean was the one who invited him into the backseat in the first place, and it's hardly his fault that he latches onto whatever's nearest to him if it's either that or fall off the seat. Besides, Dean was the one grinding against him, not the other way around.   
  
Dean's awkward and vaguely flushed for the rest of the day. Sam likes it more than he should.  
  
  
  
Sometimes, Sam thinks it's not right to be as happy as he is right now. With the way his life goes, something awful is sure to be around the corner, but for the time being, he's got Dean beside him and the memory of Dean's warmth against him. The sun is shining bright and there's a soft breeze in the trees, late-summer warm that makes everything feel just right, vivid blue sky shot through with yellows and pinks as the sun fades away for the night. They've been making their way across the heartland for a week now, just looking for cases, ambling along and stopping wherever looks interesting on the way. It's the slow season and Dean's managed to find five different bakeries with good pie in a row, so Sam's not complaining about the detours.   
  
Something awful's bound to happen. Any day now.  
  
Dean licks a crumb of pie from the corner of his mouth and grins over at Sam, a bit of cherry filling still smeared across his bottom lip.  
  
Yup. Any day now.  
  
  
  
This time, he's the one who sees Tessa. Maybe the reapers talk; he certainly didn't react favorably to the last one, and she doesn't seem like the type to start giggling at the obituaries page. Maybe she's taking a liking to them. Maybe she was just in the area for no apparent reason. He doesn't seem to be able to find any rhyme or reason to when new changes happen in his life.  
  
It's another locked-room murder to look into; Dean's already inside, interviewing the neighbors, and Sam's following a few minutes behind in his electrician's uniform. He still feels stupid wearing it, but he's not twenty-two anymore, and it doesn't feel as much like dress-up as it used to. He's mulling over what little facts of the case they've managed to cobble together when he looks up and sees her. She's leaning against a streetlight pole, and she smiles at him when his eyes widen in recognition.   
  
“Hey there, Sam,” she says. She's always seemed strangely otherworldly to him, enough that she stands out from everyone else on the street in an instant. No one else is looking at her, but no one else seems to notice him talking to nothing, either.   
  
“Hey, Tessa,” he says. “Checking up on us?”   
  
“Babysitting,” she corrects, and judging by her tone, she's not here because she's taken a shine to the two of them. “I'm supposed to ease you two into this.”   
  
“... Into what?” Sam asks, frowning.  
  
She raises an eyebrow. “Ask Dean,” she says, and holds out a brown paper sack, weak with grease. “These are for him, by the way. I think they're onion rings.” And with that supremely helpful bit of information, she leaves Sam standing there, baffled.   
  
“Great,” Sam mutters. He's got the beginnings of a headache, and apparently Dean knows more than he's letting on but didn't feel the need to clue Sam in. At least both things are familiar by now.  
  
“Hey, move it,” someone calls, jostling him as they move past. The street is packed with people and Sam's stationary, an easy target for the short-tempered. And yet, he wasn't having a problem with it a minute ago.  
  
Huh.   
  
  
  
There are werewolves prowling the streets in a tiny backwater Louisiana town, turning the sleepy community into a huddled mass of terrified residents. Either there's more than one or the one they've got is more vicious than most; there are five attacks on record by the time they arrive, and they've only got two more nights to take the thing down. Sam keeps referring to the werewolf by its French name, just on general principle—it's not like he has an excuse to in any other region—and Dean jostles with him, calling him a freak and a nerd. Sam's okay with it. He's been a freak long enough to own up to the fact now. It's harder to be uncomfortable with the label after you've died four times, prevented the Apocalypse, been the vessel for the Devil, and developed a taste for demon blood.   
  
As it turns out, there's only one werewolf. By the time they catch up to it, it's taken one person down; they're not quick enough to see it, or stop it, but by the time Sam reaches the gashed and torn corpse the spirit is already standing by its body.   
  
“Which way did it go?” Sam asks, looking around wildly for some sign. A blood trail, a bit of fur snagged on something, anything—if he lets the trail go cold the man in front of him won't be the only casualty tonight.   
  
He's not actually expecting the man to answer. He isn't sure what he is expecting, truthfully, and he startles when the man looks down at himself and asks, “Am I--”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says, trying on the best sympathetic smile he can muster under the circumstances. “I'm sorry, but--please. It's important. If we can find it soon, we can stop it from hurting anyone else.”  
  
The man seems to come to a decision. He nods and points, and Sam takes off at a full sprint in that direction, gun held ready. He can hear the slap of Dean's footsteps behind him but underneath that, there's a lower sound, like a growl. In the shadows, halfway down an alleyway, there's a slumped figure, blood-stained and panting, and when it turns to look at Sam its fangs catch the light and glint white.   
  
Five minutes and two silver bullets later, the town's werewolf problem is gone. They don't stick around; the gunshots are bound to draw attention in a town this small, and being blood-spattered in an area with two bodies in it isn't the way Sam wants to spend his Friday night. Instead, he and Dean make their way back to the motel room and clean up, stripping out of the blooded clothes. Sam stretches, savoring the ache in his muscles, and he's halfway into a new shirt when Dean calls from the bathroom, “We should go out.”   
  
“It's midnight, Dean,” Sam points out. He shrugs the shirt the rest of the way on and starts buttoning it up, not looking up as Dean comes closer.   
  
“C'mon, Sammy, you wouldn't be going to sleep until three anyway. Let's go get a beer.”   
  
Sam has some choice words about Dean being a functioning alcoholic, but he doesn't push it. He doesn't mention, either, that not fifteen minutes ago they just killed someone. Actually, he thinks, that's a damn good reason to get drunk. He'd rather not think about the morality of putting down weres or the fact that the spirit actually answered him this time. Smoothing over his thoughts with a little self-medication isn't the worst idea of the night.   
  
Two hours later, they stumble back to the motel, grinning at each other. Dean's been cracking dumb jokes to keep Sam from getting maudlin-drunk, and Sam keeps bumping up against him as he tries to get the door open. It's close to perfect, for a moment or two, and Sam lets his worries fade away for a while, focusing on Dean's flushed cheeks and little grin and the way he keeps knocking into Sam like he needs a full-body reassurance that Sam's still next to him.   
  
How it goes from that to kissing Sam isn't sure. One moment, he's pressed to Dean's side and the next he's slammed up against the door to the motel room and Dean's mouth is all over his, long, deep kisses that make something burn low in Sam's stomach. He grips onto Dean's hair hard and holds him there. It's nothing close to perfect, sloppy and bitter around the edges from the lingering beer in their mouths, but Sam wants more of it. Just the initial spark and already he wants more, more, more, and then all he can think of is  _Rebel Yell_  and he's laughing against Dean's mouth despite himself.   
  
Dean pulls back, then, eyes big as saucers, like he doesn't know what the hell just happened and definitely wasn't responsible for any of it. Sam says, “It's okay, Dean,” and Dean moves backwards, gets the door open, collapses onto his bed. Sam's still staring openly, taking in Dean's kiss-reddened mouth and spreading pink flush. He takes a deep breath and then another, trying to pull himself back together, and then he drops down onto his own bed.   
  
His head is swimming, and all he wants to do is crawl over to Dean's bed and get in with him, but Dean's turned away from him, back tense. Nothing more's going to happen tonight.  
  
He sighs, staring up at the ceiling, and tries to make sleep take him.   
  
  
  
They don't talk about it, the next morning. They don't really need to. Sam knows perfectly well that Dean was sober enough to remember what he said. They both remember it just fine, the hot, sweet press of his lips to Dean's, the way Dean melted into him, went loose and hot and pliant like he wanted Sam to just roll him onto the bed and take him apart piece by piece. Sam wants to. He's wanted to for a long time, but it's the first time in years that there's no hesitation at the thought. Dean's the best and most forbidden thing he's ever wanted, and damn if that doesn't make the thought better. He's wanted to in some way or another since he was a teenager; it's only natural. Dean never had an awkward phase, just went from one type of beautiful to another. Dean would kick his ass if he knew Sam thought of him as beautiful (it's too close to 'pretty') but it's true. He is.   
  
He wants to, and Dean wants to, if how he acted that night was any indication. He won't push it, not when there's even a chance of scaring Dean off, but when Dean's ready to cross those lines Sam will be there, waiting on the other side.   
  
  
  
The next body they find isn't from a violent death. It's just an old man in Indiana quietly going to sleep and not waking up. He's relaxed onto a park bench, cane propped up next to him, and he closes his eyes against the bright summer sun and the sounds of children playing in the background, birds in the trees, a thousand quiet, pleasant sounds slipping away into nothingness as he lets the world go. He rises up out of his body, and Sam's there beside him.   
  
The man looks down at himself. “Wasn't a bad way to go,” he says, and he smiles, a soft, peaceful sort of smile. He's old enough that he's accepted the possibility of death a long time ago. He's not the type that will linger on and be twisted by the ravages of time. In that moment, Sam knows exactly what to do, deep in his bones, and his body moves on an instinct that isn't his own. He takes the man by the hand and leads him away from his body, walking into the bright afternoon sun.   
  
“It'll be alright,” Sam tells him, and he smiles. “I'm not supposed to tell you what comes after; I couldn't, even if I wanted to. It's different for everyone, so I don't know what'll be waiting for you.”   
  
The man says, “I've had a pretty good life,” and he looks skyward, hope lighting him up.  
  
“You'll be fine, then,” Sam says. “They let me in. And if there's somebody—if there was somebody, they'll be waiting for you there.”   
  
Age melts off the man's face as he smiles, and for a moment Sam sees the young man underneath, full of life and vitality and pure, unsullied joy. He looks like he's been given a gift, and with a last nod to Sam, he fades away into blinding, pure light. Dean watches from a distance but doesn't approach, and Sam turns to face him after he's sure the man is gone.   
  
“...Oh,” he says, when Sam comes back. Tessa's presence makes sense, now. They understand why they're not getting older, why life has slowed down for them a little. People can still see them—maybe people will always be able to see them—but they're something different now, not quite two ordinary Kansas boys anymore, if they ever were.   
  
That night, Dean crawls into Sam's bed without even asking. He doesn't need to ask, and they both know it. Dean presses his mouth to Sam's, cold stone sober, and Sam kisses back.   
  
“You sure this is alright?” Dean asks.  
  
Sam grins. “You don't even need to ask, Dean,” he says, and he guides Dean's mouth back down to his.   
  
They spend more than an hour just kissing, enjoying the slow slide of their mouths against each other until they're both short of breath and thrumming with energy. Dean rolls out from under Sam when Sam lets his hips press down against Dean's, and Sam frowns. Before he can ask, Dean makes the universal motion for jerking off and disappears into the bathroom. Sam can deal with that, for now, especially since Dean doesn't bother to muffle the noises he makes.   
  
He slides a hand into his own boxers and closes his eyes, straining to hear the sounds Dean makes through the door.   
  
It works.   
  
  
  
And so, they let it happen, all of it. The days pass by, each one not so different from the rest, and Dean never gets more than the handful of gray hairs he had to start with. Sam never gets any at all.   
  
Sam takes the hand of a little girl in a hospital while Dean cons his way into the morgue in the basement, checking out the latest gruesome death in a string of several. She's no more than seven or eight, and he can't look her parents in the eye as the two of them walk down the hall. No one can see him, right now; he gets a headache when he goes from visible to not, but hasn't figured out any way of controlling it past that when someone dies near him he tends to disappear from everyone's sight except Dean's. She looks up at him with big eyes and he crouches down, a gentle hand on her shoulder. Dean's better with kids than he is, honestly, but he tries to tell her that it'll be alright; she's going someplace good, somewhere she's going to be happy.   
  
“I don't wanna leave,” she says, looking back at her empty body, at her parents sitting by her bedside.  
  
“I know,” Sam says. “You need to, though. They're going to miss you, but you'll see them again, okay? You will.” He hopes so, at least. He doesn't know how memory-based heavens work when there are only a few years of memories to draw from; still, with a few more reassurances, he sends her on, and she goes. He sighs, making his way back down the stairs to Dean, unable to shake the guilt. It's the age thing. He and Dean don't get a say in who they take and who they don't—sometimes it's a general sense of who to take, just people they encounter on a case, and sometimes, it's honest-to-god post-its that appear stuck to their motel doors or inside their wallets—but neither of them like it when it's kids.   
  
Speaking of post-its, the fact that Death apparently has a thing for purple post-it notes  _really_  weirds him out.   
  
“Is she gonna be alright?” Dean asks as Sam opens the door to the morgue and comes to stand by his brother's side.   
  
“Yeah, she'll be okay,” Sam says, pulling on his gloves with a snap of latex.   
  
“Bet she gets a teddy bear factory or something.”  
  
“... a teddy bear factory? Really, Dean?”  
  
“What? She's seven, come on.”   
  
Sam grins and shrugs.   
  
  
  
“What's it all mean?” the guy asks.  
  
They are both getting so, so tired of that question.  
  
“Honestly?” Dean says. “I don't know, and I've died—how many times have I died, Sammy?”  
  
Sam frowns. “Are we counting the Groundhog Day experience or not?”  
  
“Might as well.”   
  
“I'd say around a hundred and fifteen times.”   
  
The guy  _stares._    
  
“So, yeah,” Dean says. “I've died a hundred and fifteen times, and I still don't know. Find meaning wherever you want, man. There's no right or wrong answer.”   
  
  
  
One day halfway through November, they're at Bobby's, kicked back on the couch with beers in hand as rain pours down outside, a steady thrumming against the windowpanes. These days, they're almost as used to leading spirits on as putting them to rest by fire, and when Bobby asks them what they've been up to, Sam admits, “Some hunting, some reaping.” He didn't mean to put it that bluntly, but, well, he's definitely not on his first couple of beers anymore.   
  
“Reaping.”   
  
“Yeah, we were gonna tell you about that,” Dean says, taking another swig of his own beer. “Apparently Death decided to hire us and forgot to give us the memo.”  
  
“You're not dead,” Bobby points out. “You boys gonna tell me Death just decided to put you on his team while you were still alive?”   
  
“Got a theory about that one, actually,” Sam says, and Dean turns to him, an odd expression lurking at the edges of his face. Sam hasn't actually shared this one yet. “So, Hell wants nothing to do with us, right.”   
  
“... Right,” Bobby says warily, and motions for Sam to go on.   
  
“Heaven... I don't know what's going on with Cas but I don't exactly get the impression we're in his good books anymore. And Purgatory—well, we already killed Eve. So if we can die, we eventually end up in one of those three places, and none of them want us there.”   
  
“So, what, Death played peacemaker?” Dean asks, eyebrows going up.   
  
“Well, we are harder to kill like this,” Sam points out. He shrugs. “Actually, I'm not sure if we're killable at all without Death's scythe. So it's win-win for him. He gets more people to do his monkey work and we stop upsetting the balance by dying every five minutes.”   
  
“Huh,” Dean says. He shrugs and takes another sip of beer. “I've heard worse theories.”   
  
  
  
They're not monsters; they're never going to be monsters, but they're something else, something set apart from the rest of the world, something new and unique. Maybe it's that knowledge that finds Sam pressed to Dean in the middle of the night with only the moon as witness.   
  
It starts out as just scuffling in the salvage yard; Dean starts making cracks about Sam's hair and Sam starts making cracks about how Dean's thirty-nine, and he's “gonna be over the hill soon, gonna be an old man,” and Dean calls him a little bitch and tries to tackle him. Sam twists out of his grip, and they tussle, thudding against the side of a car so hard that the breath gets knocked from both of them. Dean kisses Sam, then, and Sam kisses back, and the next thing he knows, they've gone from zero to one hundred sixty and Sam's hands are sliding up under Dean's shirt to press against hot, smooth skin, and Dean's fingers are fumbling for the button of Sam's jeans. Dean slides a hand in and pulls Sam out, grip tight enough to make Sam gasp like there's no air left anywhere as Dean starts to stroke him off. The friction is tight and perfect and Sam digs his nails into Dean's skin and pulls Dean closer to him, tugging at button-fly and belt and zipper until he can shove Dean's jeans down his hips and draw the two of them flush. Dean sinks teeth into the crook of Sam's neck in just the right spot, murmurs against the spit-slick skin, “I gotcha, Sammy, I gotcha. Come on, come for me,” and Sam's never been as good at following orders as Dean but he can follow that one just fine.   
  
  
  
They move together, slick and hot in the backseat of the Impala on a rainy day, pulled off to the side of a dusty backroad that doesn't even have a name, just county route 42. It's winter now, it's been months since that first time, and the air outside is freezing but Sam is burning with heat. Dean is underneath him, bitten-red mouth open wide as Sam opens him up slow, curling his fingers deeper and fingerfucking him with slow, deliberate motions, pressing and twisting until Dean is wordless and panting, fucking himself back onto Sam's hand, all shame lost. He pushes Sam onto his back and straddles him, closing his eyes as he opens himself up and lets Sam sink into him. Sam's skin feels like it's on fire, where they're pressed together, so hot it almost hurts, and Dean makes tiny, almost-hurt noises but he doesn't stop moving, wringing pleasure out of the both of them that's painful in its intensity. Sam holds onto Dean's hips so hard that Dean will have bruises for days, after, and he pushes up into Dean's body, trying to push himself deeper, get more, hold onto this feeling forever. Dean shudders around him, his whole body quivering with the motion, and the two of them move together, matching rhythm as easy as falling in stride with each other. Sam wants to mark Dean in some inarguable way, so that every time Dean looks in the mirror he'll know, he'll remember being claimed like this.   
  
Sam comes so hard he forgets to breathe, and there are spots dancing in front of his vision when Dean laughs and says, “Don't die on me, Sammy.” He squeezes Sam's hip and brings himself off fast, mouth tipped open. It's the best thing Sam's seen all month.   
  
  
  
Dean turns forty. Sam buys him an over the hill hat and a crappy cake from Walmart with a plastic tombstone. In past years, they wouldn't joke about dying, but now it's just another part of life. They see it every day, even more than they used to. Now, they're not sure they're ever going to actually die, so they can joke all they want. Dean picks the little plastic tombstone off the cake and licks off the icing before throwing it at Sam's face and Sam yelps, ducking. Somehow, somehow they have gotten their reward. They have persevered. They have dealt with Heaven and Hell and everything in between, spent years suffering one disaster after another, praying to stay alive, to stay together, to keep the world from falling apart around them. They have spent so long being afraid, being in pain, and they have survived long enough to see the fruits of their labors. They aren't the meek, and they haven't inherited the Earth, but they've got their corner and it's god enough for the both of them. Sam's got Dean and Dean's got Sam and neither of them are dying anytime soon. It's enough.   
  
  
  
He and Dean lead the next spirit on together.   
  
She's a beautiful girl, the sort Dean used to love. Young and beautiful and so scared, so confused and lost. Sam's seen the fear on her face in a hundred others, the fear and the anger underneath it. Maybe, if they weren't here, she might linger in this place forever.   
  
“It's alright,” Sam tells her. “Things will be better now.”   
  
Her father will get his just reward. They're not allowed to give out much in the way of detail about where she's going, but they can tell her the rest. Dean tells her what Hell is like, and she stops crying and lets herself smile.   
  
“Like the DMV, only the line never ends,” he says, grinning in that disarming way that always works with girls Dean talks to. “You don't have to stay here to punish him. He's got his punishment coming.”   
  
They stay and talk to her for a long time. Dean offers to buy her coffee—Sam isn't sure she could actually drink it—but she shakes her head. They've been walking along the road that leads away from her house, and she says, so quiet that they nearly miss it, “I didn't deserve this.”   
  
“I know,” they both say, at once.   
  
“What's it like?” she asks, and Sam and Dean exchange a glance.   
  
“Well,” Sam begins, “it's like life, pretty much. It's whatever you want to make it. I don't know what yours will be like.”   
  
“Have you seen it?” she asks, and he nods.   
  
“Yeah,” he says. “Mine's mostly a lot of him.” He grins and jerks a thumb in Dean's direction and she laughs and calls them cute.   
  
“Hey,” Sam says, just before she disappears into the light. “If you run into someone named Castiel—tell him I forgive him, and we'd like to know how he's doing.”   
  
Just before she fades into the light, he sees her nod. Dean gives Sam a measured look, and Sam shrugs. He's been meaning to pass along that message for a long time now.   
  
“You think we're ever getting back there?” Dean asks, and Sam thinks about it.   
  
“I don't know,” he admits. “I kinda like it here.”  
  
And Dean says, “Yeah.”   
  
They don't need to replay old memories. They have new ones to make.  
  
They drive on, into the darkness.


End file.
